I watched the Georgia 2020 divulge. Here’s what the FBI raid in Fulton County is de facto about.
Cyber investigation
The 2nd the media declared Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election, I turned into on a flight from Washington, D.C., to Atlanta — deployed in my feature as counsel to the Biden campaign to shield the need of Georgia voters because the speak pollcounting direction of unfolded. For many People, the election turned into over. But my work turned into factual getting started.
Past a shadow of a doubt, Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election in Georgia by near to 12,000 votes.
Under Georgia law, the close margin required election officers to make no longer simplest the long-established-or-backyard counting direction of, but additionally a “threat limiting audit” — a hand divulge of all 5 million ballots solid. Our factual team, and that of the Trump campaign, seen as every of Georgia’s 159 counties counted the ballots, certified the count after which counted them again by hand. In spite of the entirety of this, the Trump campaign demanded a third count in the manufacture of a statewide machine divulge. Georgia’s dedicated election workers counted every polla third time, in overall working in a single day in shifts while contending with threats of violence and an exceptional global pandemic. Watching it unfold, I turned into awed by the election workers’s dedication and their dedication to the integrity of the plan.
After three counts, the outcomes remained unchanged. Past a shadow of a doubt, Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election in Georgia by near to 12,000 votes. Republican Secretary of Affirm Brad Raffensperger and Republican Gov. Brian Kemp certified the outcomes no topic intense strain from then-President Donald Trump. Courts rejected every are attempting by the Trump campaign and the president’s allies to overturn the outcomes.
And yet, bigger than 5 years later, President Trump has taken his most outrageous step to overturn the 2020 election ends in Georgia. On Wednesday, a phalanx of FBI agents descended on the Fulton County election operations heart and seized hundreds of packing containers of ballots, tabulator tapes, pollimages and other documents linked to the 2020 vote.
People who deem in free and radiant elections wants to be timid. But no longer for the reason that president and his cronies on the FBI and the Justice Division can also salvage some “smoking gun” in those 5-year-vulnerable packing containers that finally validates years of lies and conspiracy theories. They won’t. It doesn’t exist. But People wants to be timid on memoir of of what this portends for the 2026 midterms.
People wants to be timid on memoir of of what this portends for the 2026 midterms.
The Trump administration dispatched federal officers to rob away ballots and vote casting equipment from the hands of speak election officers — the place they belong — and placed them below federal adjust. Here’s a threat to the very foundation of free and radiant elections: that ballots are solid and counted by neutral, statutorily mandated speak election processes without interference by candidates on the ballot.
Let’s be certain about the place our society would be headed. This tumble, we’re increasingly liable to peer a president commanding the federal law enforcement equipment to rob ballots and vote casting equipment, prosecute election workers, intimidate voters and election officers and interfere with the counting of ballots and the certification of election outcomes.
Public officers can not give you the cash for to wait except it’s too unhurried to behave or focus on out. Governors, secretaries of speak, attorneys long-established and other speak and local election officers know that elections are a speak feature safe by the Structure. As Georgia officers did in the face of threats and heavy criticism in 2020, they must proceed to honor the law and the actual fact. Judges must watch every federal intrusion brought sooner than the courts.
Contributors of Congress swore an oath as soon as they took office to shield the Structure in opposition to all enemies, international and domestic. What threat to our Structure is bigger than the demolition of neutral elections?
The FBI raid in Fulton County is simplest a preview of what can also come if Trump stays unchecked.
The FBI raid in Fulton County is simplest a preview of what can also come if Trump stays unchecked. There is unruffled time for Republicans in the U.S. Home and Senate to function their accountability and supply protection to free and radiant elections for future generations of People — but it completely is operating short.
As a voter protection prison skilled who worked on the two finest recounts in American history, I know that speak processes to count ballots are thorough, salvage and true. I also know that staying mute while the Trump administration takes matters, and ballots, into its non-public hands would irreparably harm our democracy.
“It’s intended to sow ache,” Fulton County Commissioner Mo Ivory acknowledged in the wake of the FBI search. “Folks that in overall would withstand verbalize their free and radiant true to vote accumulate scared to function that. And that’s precisely what [Trump] hopes will happen.”
She’s true. And we can’t let ache derive.
Jacquelyn Lopez is a partner at Elias Law Crew and served as voter protection counsel for the Biden-Harris campaign for the length of the 2020 Georgia divulge. She also helped lead the 2018 Florida divulge team for Sen. Bill Nelson.
